An epic mashup of Star Wars and the movies that inspired it

The "mash up popular movies with prior movies that inspired them" genre has been around at least since Kirby Ferguson's "Everything is a Remix" series, but Michael Heilemann's video "Kitbashed," which aims to intermingle Star Wars: A New Hope with clips of everything from Flash Gordon to the soundtrack to Kings Row, is perhaps the most ambitious entrant I've seen to date:

Star Wars: Kitbashed from Michael Heilemann on Vimeo.

Heilemann is clear that the montage doesn't, and can't, include everything that might have inspired George Lucas. The film is part of a book project, and the eventual e-book will be able to chronicle source material that's harder to interpolate into a mashup video. He chose to do a full movie-length video rather than a shorter, Ferguson-esque one highlighting only similarities with past films to ensure he didn't diminish Lucas' contributions, or portray the film as simply the sum of its influences. "I could have made a super-fast cut of the Battle of Yavin, but above all it wouldn't show you where I don't believe it used inspiration, only where it did," he writes, "and secondly I couldn't bring myself to cut down that sequence because it remains to this day one of the greatest pieces of filmmaking ever."

Hat-tip to Digg.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via